Anne Polivka Receives 2024 Shiskin Award
Anne Polivka, Research Chief in the Office of Employment and Unemployment Statistics (OEUS) at the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), has been selected as the recipient of the 2024 Julius Shiskin Memorial Award for Economic Statistics.
Dr. Polivka is recognized for her leadership in developing the Contingent and Alternative Work Arrangements Supplement (CWS) to the Current Population Survey (CPS). The CWS is a crucial source of data on the growth of alternative work arrangements, including the relatively recent growth of platform-mediated work in the gig economy.
Dr. Polivka is also recognized for her leadership of the modernization of the Current Population Survey (CPS), which provided improved insight into work activity, hours of work, and earnings, and for her contributions to our understanding of the labor market impacts of Katrina and Covid-19 and of the effects of manufacturers’ increased use of staffing agency employees on standard measures of manufacturing employment and productivity
For more information, access the Shiskin Award Page or the Shiskin Award press release.
Dr. Erica Goshen is the 2024 Economic Outlook Lunchtime Speaker
Dr. Erica Goshen, Senior Economic Advisor of the Institute for Compensation Studies of Cornell University, is the speaker at this year’s Economic Outlook Luncheon, which will be held on Tuesday, August 6th starting at 12:30 PM.
Dr. Goshen's' talk is titled "Let's Standardize Our Way to Better Economic Data". The abstract for this talk appears below:
Societies use standards to facilitate exchange, whether for weights and measures or electrical and plumbing equipment. As we enter the Information Age, we need more complete standards for highly exchanged data. This matters because, ironically, despite the advent of the information age has seen eroding quality in many timely and important official economic indicators—due to declining household and business survey response rates. As part of modernizing, statistical agencies are responding by relying more heavily on burgeoning public and private administrative data. But, as analysts know, much administrative data fails to measure what is needed, or is messy, inconsistent, incomplete, or difficult to obtain reliably. Current solutions to these challenges, such as blending multiple sources and applying computationally intensive fixes, can only take you so far. The talk will explore how wide adoption of data standards by the private sector could graft many advantages of surveys onto administrative sources. The main example discussed will be the Jobs and Employment Data Exchange initiative (led by the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation) to devise and promote data standards for employers.
Keywords: Data standards, Official statistics, Economic statistics, Labor Market, Employment, Jobs
You will need to sign up for this luncheon in advance.
More information on this talk is available in the JSM 2024 Online Program.
Biographical information for Dr. Goshen is available on the Cornell University website.
B&E Section Election Results Announced
The B&E Section announces the results for the 2024 ASA Election for section officers:
- Chair-Elect 2025 Beth Andrews, Northwestern University
- Program Chair-Elect 2025 Yao Zheng, University of Connecticut
- Secretary/Treasurer 2025–2026 Mariana Saenz-Ayala, Georgia Southern University
Many thanks to all the candidates and congratulations to the winners.
Call for Participation: SAPW 2024
Since 2016, four Seasonal Adjustment Practitioners Workshops (SAPW) have taken place: three at the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington, DC, and one held virtually. These workshops provided valuable experiences for both attendees and presenters, and plans are underway to organize another workshop.
The next virtual workshop will be held on September 11th (1 to 4:30 PM EDT) and September 12th (9 AM to noon EDT). The American Statistical Association's Government Statistics Section, Business and Economics Statistics Section, and the Washington Statistical Society have provided support for past workshops. The National Institute of Statistical Sciences (NISS) is a new sponsor of SAPW 2024.
For more information, access the Call for Participation on this website.
B & E Student Paper Award Winners for 2024
The Business and Economic Statistics Section announced the winners of the 2024 American Statistical Association Student Paper Awards, given by the section.
- Yihong Gu, Princeton University (Department of Operations Research and Financial Engineering), “Environment Invariant Linear Least Squares”
- Yi Zhang, Harvard University (Department of Statistics), “Individualized Policy Evaluation and Learning under Clustered Network Interference”
- John Zito, Rice University (Department of Statistics), “The Projected Dynamic Linear Model for Time Series on the Sphere”
- Angela Wyse, University of Chicago (Harris School of Public Policy), “Saved by Medicaid: New Evidence on Health Insurance and Mortality from the Universe of Low-Income Adults”
The award-winning students will present their papers at the Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) in a Topic-Contributed session. The students will also receive a cash award.
For more details, including a complete list of the members of the 2024 B&E Student Paper Awards Committee, access the student awards announcement (PDF file).
Congratulations to the award winners for their submissions.
2023 Zellner Award Winner Announced
The Business and Economic Statistics Section of the American Statistical Association and sponsor SAS are proud to announce the recipient of the 2023 Arnold Zellner Thesis Award: Davide Viviano for the University of California San Diego thesis "Essays in Policy Design and Statistical Inference." An honorable mention was awarded to Kohei Yata for the Yale University thesis "Econometric Methods for Program Evaluation and Policy Choice."
The award includes a $1500 prize, generously provided by SAS Institute.
For more information on the Zellner Thesis Award, including submission information for the Zellner Thesis Award, access the Zellner Thesis Award Page.